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Rescued Banks Sought Foreign Help During Meltdown
theodp writes "An AP review of visa applications has found that major US banks sought permission to bring thousands of foreign workers into the country under the H-1B visa program, even as the banking system was melting down and Americans were being laid off. The dozen banks now receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years. (It's not known how many of these were granted; the article notes 'The actual number is likely a fraction of the... workers the banks sought to hire because the government only grants 85,000 such visas each year among all US employers.') The American Bankers Association blamed the US talent pool for forcing the move, saying they couldn't find enough Americans capable of handling sales, lending, and bank administration. The AP has filed FOIA requests to force the US Customs and Immigration Service to disclose further details on the bailed-out banks' foreign hires."
And with it, the protectionism and labor unionism that plagued the country for decades. Want to see what happens when the whole US economy becomes like GM ? You're in for a ride.
Now let one thing be clear. What is a H1-B ?
It's a piece of paper from the government which says: you can work for your employer, and we will not come with guns to force you back on a plane.
What a privilege ! How can citizens allow WILLING EMPLOYERS and WILLING EMPLOYEES to contract, between the 49th parallel and the Rio Grande. What an outrage.
Mind your own fucking business. Hire who you want, work for who will want to hire you, but don't try to dictate who your neighbors can invite or hire on their property.
Rescued Banks Sought Foreign Help During Meltdown
and then
...requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years.
I wasn't aware the banking system was already melting down in 2003. Given the delay inherent in gov't bureaucracies, H1-B visa requests granted now may have been in the system for months, if not years.
Have gnu, will travel.
I am a manager at major technology company. One that nearly anyone would love to get a job with.
I have hired a lot of people over the last few years. And a lot of people straight out of college. And I've hired a LOT of foreigners. I've had to deal with H1-B issues every year for 4 years.
I dearly want to hire Americans. I have a candidate right now who is really good and I'm frothing at the mouth to sign him up.
And I don't believe Americans are stupid or can't do what foreigners can. But here's the thing, Americans in college mostly seem to have lousy resumes.
Remember when you are getting a job out of college, that most of your peers (meaning college students graduating nationwide) will have no actual experience in anything but the basic concepts of your field. Most employers realize that a college student is mostly considered a smart blank slate, one they will have to train a while in the ways of work before they can contribute well.
When I see resumes from Indian students, both educated in India and educated in the US (often just graduate school), the Indian students have FAR better resumes than any of the American students. The resumes list specific courses which show that the applicant has done projects which involved design and implementation while still in school. Also, they will often have fantastic summer experience. Meanwhile, American students will apparently have been delivering pizza for the summer because there's usually nothing listed.
So, Americans, do yourself a favor. When you enter college, do a resume search of students graduating from your school or similar ones. Look at some of the resumes from the Indian students. See the experience they are listing, and then go get yourself some of this experience, both in school and during the summers.
Yes, work your butt off in classes too, but you also need to work extra hard to make sure you land a good-quality internship between your junior and senior years. And take project-type classes that show you can do work in the field you want to land a job in, not just that you know the concepts and math involved. And make sure when someone reads your resume, they can tell from it what you learned/did.
You'll make things a lot easier on me too, because I want to hire Americans (trust me, the government is still doing a good job of making it easier to hire Americans than foreigners), and if you make it easier for me to find you, we both win.
Honest question - who decides what American workers get paid? Does the average for the foreign workers have to be the same as the national average? Or some other metric? Or does the company just have to pay their own foreign and American workers the same for the same position?
Because if it's the latter, what's stopping a bank from lowering the entry-level pay of all, say, branch managers from $15/hr to $10/hr, then when they can't find enough qualified Americans willing to work for that amount turning to H1Bs? They'll pay the Americans they do get the same, but there won't be enough willing to take it so they can claim a shortage and pay everyone less.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
I'm in the training and education field, so take this with the sarcastic tone I write it with ... "Taking time to train our people costs money and time, which reduces profit for the shareholders, therefore training is bad." It is the same attitude we have with the vast majority of our public education, and that's one of the reasons there are so many openings for H1-Bs. If we as a country valued education more, we would use the number of H1-Bs as an indicator of where we are failing to educate our own students. I don't have a problem with individuals being brought in on H1-Bs; but, I do have a problem knowing that one of the single biggest systemic reasons why are currently bringing in outsiders is lack of education and training.
I hire a lot of foreigners. Trust me, we pay out the ass for them. They're more expensive than 90% of Americans who apply for the same job, and then again, they're more qualified than 90% of Americans who apply.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
News item: Waves of layoffs hit record industry as illegal downloading becomes a way of life.
Slashdot reaction: Woo-hoo! The laws of economics are on our side. Freedom and destiny are on our side. Open your eyes and deal with the new and improved realities of the 21st century!
News item: Microsoft losing ground to free software on server side.
Slashdot reaction: Woo-hoo! The laws of economics are on our side. Freedom and destiny are on our side. Open your eyes and deal with the new and improved realities of the 21st century!
News item: American tech companies are lobbying to hire more H-1B's.
Slashdot reaction: Waaaaaaaaaahhhh!!! Where the f*** are our elected representatives on this, and why is this conspiracy against the workers allowed to continue?? These are OUR TAX DOLLARS paying the salaries of Congressmen and giving tax breaks to these companies, and besides, those H-1B workers aren't good enough, I've worked with some and I couldn't believe the incompetence and parroting of what they learned in training class and besides, they're grossly mistreated like indentured servants so it's actually a human rights thing blah blah blah...
Heh. What goes around...
One way companies get around the pay issues it to apply for the H1-B via a company (body shop) located in Maine for example, and then contract out the H1-B to a company in California.
I believe this is all covered in graduate school when you get your MBA now.
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
Umm, no.
While most might not remember this, since it happened four months ago, those big banks that got the $150 billion bailout were ORDERED by the Treasury Secretary to take a bailout. Most of them didn't even want it. I recall reading in the paper at the time that the Secretary had to basically lock them into a meeting and tell them they weren't leaving till they'd accepted a bailout. Apparently, someone was afraid that bankers who really needed a bailout would be afraid to admit it if everyone wasn't getting a bailout.
Note also that this H1B thing isn't something that's happened recently. It happened over the last 6+ years, BEFORE the banks were bailed out (at the next best thing to gunpoint).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I am sort of enjoying watching the United States have these epiphanies about protectionism, minimum wages, banking regulation etc. Not because I wish ill on you guys - I absolutely don't. If we must have a 900 pound gorilla of a country indirectly ruling the world, I'd prefer America to, say, China. Or just about anyone else.
But for years and years, the rest of the world has protested long and loud as the U.S. has rammed radical capitalist theories down our throats - no, you may not protect local IP, jobs, vulnerable industries, agriculture, culture, etc etc etc. Globalise everything, open your markets, participate in the race to the bottom. It has seemed crazy and backwards to you that any of us would even consider having high minimum wages, good unemployment benefits, strong unionised workforces, public health, free education and so on. Such things are apparently "socialist", which to many Americans (especially of the right wing bent) really means a combination of "communist" and "totalitarian".
Sure, globalisation has created a lot of growth. But it has also been unneccessarily destructive, and in many countries has wrought untold damage before any benefit has been seen.
So now, after forgetting all about the New Deal and after ignoring the post-WWII warnings your own leaders and intellectuals gave you about the corporatisation of your nation, you finally start to see what can happen to an economy and a society when you strip all of those terrible 'protectionist' policies away and then expose it to harsh conditions. Banks are hiring foreigners because (a) it's cheaper and (b) you have created a culture where the only "right" is corporations doing things as profitably as possible and the only "wrong" is putting anything ahead of money. You're a late entrant in the race to the bottom that you created.
But the measure of intelligence is not whether you make mistakes - it's whether you learn from the ones you do make. I hope you learn from all of this, I really do. Getting rid of the Republican Party and moving your idea of "centrist" away from what the rest of us regard as "far right" might be a good starting point.
Read Pynchon.
Ok, so you're responding to my situation without seeing the rest of my posts, possibly fair because I would have been typing them while you were typing yours. I'm making well over 30k, and this degree IS a stepping stone to my next degree. I anticipate being jobless in two years, due to I want to try and goto grad school full time, and the company where I work now will be better able to hire another employee to do full-time work than to pay me full-time salary as a part-time employee. Granted, I'll already know the biz, but still.
As for my point in stating I would work for 65k+, then 75k+, then 85k+, bear in mind that banks are one of the few organizations that popular culture has the low man on the pole making more than most mid-level execs. I'm not saying that that myth of the popular culture is accurate, and I'm not saying it's all pervasive, but I am saying that it exists, and that there is this expectation that banks pay more than other jobs.
Also, you seem to keep posting income figures for a single individual. What about single-provider marriages and full-family situations? Should the earner still only earn enough for an individual? Are you advocating that all couples should be double-earner's? Don't you think that's unusual when so much of the world doesn't live like that?
2^3 * 31 * 647
It's because HR usually does not work for the employees, or for the company as a whole. It works for the necessary bureaucracy that is HR. That department's goals often are to commit acts that are decidedly illegal, such as to save corporate money by hiring H1B's instead of American citizens, to discriminate against older employees who might retire and collect pensions, to avoid hiring people with medical problems that will cost insurance money, to protect the jobs of descendants of company founders, to hire menial office staff who will gratefully perform sexual favors for their bosses, or to lie to employment agencies and newspapers by placing false employment ads for positions they have no intention of filling, but merely use to pretend the company finances are good. (My peers looking for work right now are running into that last one quite a lot: once you figure out the positions don't actually exist, it's a good time to warn your stock investor friends that the company is planning layoffs.)
In the course of my career, I've seen HR personnel commit every single one of those acts, with none of the HR personnel at risk for following such policies unless discovered by an outside agency. It's not all HR personnel, or all HR departments, but their loyalty is only rarely to the actual people they're helping hire or manage benefits.
>Seriously, try to support a family of 4 on $30,000/yr that you work 60-80 hrs a week for.
$30,000 in a rural part of Ohio or Western Pennsylvania? Or $30,000 in Austin Texas or Destin Florida?
There are places where I could manage it, and there are places where $30,000 wouldn't be sufficient to justify staying there 80 hours total, let alone taking a job.
If I went back to my home town, $5-10K is a solid equity position in a house with *acres* of *arable* land. Assuming you're not starting from scratch, let's say, $30-40K is actually a pretty good living there, provided you do not try to live beyond your humble means. What does that mean? Basically it means a 1950s lifestyle:
1200 square foot house. Electricity and plumbing, yes. Maybe even a clothes washer, but dry them on the line.
No TV, or maybe one.
Maybe a landline phone.
One automobile.
All meals cooked at home, with the rare outing.
If you take a vacation, it's a destination within 100 miles, ideally a self-sufficient camping/fishing/hunting trip.
I could live on a single income by those standards, and so could you.
Do I do it? Hell no. $30,000 wouldn't pay for my hobbies, let alone my mortgage, car payments and food. But I *could*, and I actually have a *plan* for it.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
$30,000 on the fringes of a city in SC when you have next to no health benefits and are on the brink of bankruptcy because of medical bills for your family. Credit for ANYTHING is no longer an option. Throw two young children and a wife who developed some health issues after 2 kids and a car accident into the mix.
More like a 1100 sq ft fairly beat up duplex rental home in a neighborhood you *MIGHT* not get shot in.
An 8 year old 24" CRT TV.
No landline, be happy to have cheap VoIP via MagicJack.
Cheapest cell phone plan you can get your hands on.
Beat up vehicle with 200,000 miles on it you can barely afford to keep running and pay for basic liability insurance on.
Can't afford real food so you live off the dollar menu at McDeath, $1 banquet TV dinners and Ramen noodles. Real food becomes a weekend luxury. Eating out at a real restaurant is for anniversaries or when a check for some side work comes in.
But at least your close enough to downtown to get a cheap cable modem.
A "vacation" becomes a 40 mile trip to Grandma's to borrow $50 for gas for the week and let the kids ride a pony.
Do I put in 80 hours every week? Not really. I put in more like 50-60 usually unless something big is going on. I don't get paid for most of my class prep time though.
At this point I'm just happy to be working. SC isn't exactly known for it's booming tech industry but the cost of living here is quite low compared to VA, MD, or CT for example.
If I had real health coverage I would not be in such bad shape. Family coverage is just not available for a reasonable price to people in my income bracket. People that make $5000/yr less get Medicaid. People that make $10000/yr more can afford insurance. It only takes a couple ER visits to run up $20,000 in bills and here they can get liens on tax returns and/or property to recover it. A chunk of my check just goes to keeping them from stealing what little I have left.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU
'Nuff Said.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
And yet there are americans who say the darnedest thinks about unions and how evil they are. So what gives? Are unions such a great resource when others benefit but suddenly turn into something awfully negative when it applies to you?